HD DVD

Mulholland Definition

(Thanks to ShawnDuHast)

A while back, I reported that I’d cancelled my pre-order of the French HD DVD release of Mulholland Dr. due to a worry that it would have forced French subtitles when English audio was selected. A post at the AV Science Forum suggested that Optimum was planning on releasing it in the UK at around the same time, and it would appear that this was correct, because ChoicesUK now have it up for pre-order for a very reasonable £14.99, with a release date of March 26th. Of course, I’ve placed my order - this will be the first title in my personal Top 20 list of films (Top 5, actually) that I’ll own in high definition.

District Blu-ray

I’ve ordered a copy of the US Blu-ray release of Luc Besson’s District B13 (also known as District 13 and Banlieue 13, depending on where you live in the world) from Amazon.com. You may remember me mentioning back in August that it was coming to HD DVD in September courtesy of Magnolia Home Entertainment. Well, surprise surprise, it failed to materialise, despite Magnolia having released other titles on the format. It did, however, show up out of the blue on Blu-ray that same month, without even a press announcement, as far as I’m aware (they seem to have done the same with their release of The World’s Fastest Indian on both formats last Tuesday). Anyway, Amazon was the only store I could find that was stocking it, so it seems that this disc is in short supply. I’ve not seen the film myself, and, not owning any other Magnolia titles, I’ve no idea what to expect from them in terms of quality or even technical specs. Given that not a single review exists for it, this is going to be very much a case of stepping into the deep end.

Gangs of New York coming to HD DVD after all!

Source: Zona DVD

Remember how back in September I posted that UK distributor Entertainment In Video was planning on releasing Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York on HD DVD? If so, you’ll probably also remember that in October I posted that bad news that EIV was backing Blu-ray exclusively. In any event, their slate of titles ended up being put back to March 2007 (presumably to coincide with the upcoming European launch of the Playstation 3), and I can now report that, thankfully, we don’t have to wait for EIV to put out their version, only to discover that it’s region-coded, because the good folks at Manga Films in Spain are putting out an HD DVD version in March too. No specifications are currently available, and the release date isn’t any more specific than “March”, but I’ll update you with details as they emerge. With this, plus other interesting titles such as Asterix and the Vikings, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, not to mention Blu-ray “exclusives” like Underworld: Evolution and Saw, Spain is turning out to be an unexpectedly good source of titles for HD DVD owners.

Babbling about Babel

My review copy of the HD DVD release of Babel arrived today, via DVD Pacific. This is the first HD DVD I’ve picked up all month, due to the complete dearth of titles available for the format, and I’m happy to report that it’s a rip-roaring success. Shot in a combination of 16mm, 35mm spherical and 35mm anamorphic, the greatly divergent visual styles could have spelled disaster, but thankfully whoever encoded this disc knew their stuff. This is Paramount’s first AVC title, having previously used VC-1 for all their releases (their Blu-ray versions, meanwhile, continue to be MPEG2, since Sony handles that side of the deal), and, in contrast to the over-compressed Wolf Creek from The Weinstein Company, there is very little in the way of artefacting on display here. There are a lot of scenes that must have been hard to compress, from the shaky-cam grainy look of Morocco to the pulsating lights in the various Japanese nightclubs, and occasionally you can spot the odd slip-up if you’re paying close attention, but otherwise this is more or less (and I usually hate to use this term) a reference quality transfer. Detail is exemplary, colour and contrast are variable but appropriate, and there is only the slightest hint of minor edge enhancement in a handful of shots. All in all, a very high 9/10.

The film itself is very good too. Alejandro González Iñárritu builds on the fractured narrative style of his previous films, Amores Perros and 21 Grams, using the same concept of disparate events involving unconnected characters coming together in different ways, although this time on a global rather than local scale. In broadening the scope, he loses some of the intimacy and focus of 21 Grams, but it’s a great film nonetheless and one that I would certainly like to see pick up a few Oscars in a week’s time.

And so the delays begin

Source: High-Def Digest

Remember when the Blu-ray camp announced a massive array of titles at CES in January, to be released during the first half of this year? Well, Fox, never one to break its promises, has indefinitely postponed a considerable chunk of that line-up. Eleven titles now no longer have a release date, among them two of the films I was most looking forward to on the format, Hannibal and The Silence of the Lambs. It just goes to show that the Blu-ray team may indeed have shot themselves in the foot by making so much noise about their software releases at CES. While the HD DVD studios will presumably spend the next few months announcing titles that are actually coming out, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Fox, Disney, Sony et al announcing further delays and cancellations.

See? When you announce your entire six-month slate of releases at a single event rather than staggering them over a longer period, the only possible news you can announce from then on will be of the bad variety. I hate to say “I told you so”, but…

Delivery debacle

My copy of the Blu-ray release of Ridley Scott’s director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven arrived today from DVD Pacific. At 194 minutes, this is one of the longest title to be released on either of the two HD formats, as far as I’m aware beaten only by the 198-minute Spartacus on HD DVD. Anyway, on DVD, this cut of Kingdom of Heaven came in a lavish four-disc set, splitting the film across the first two and showcasing a wealth of extras on discs three and four. For the Blu-ray release, all of the extras, barring the trailer, have been disposed of. And why? Would it really have been so hard for them to include an extra disc - even a standard DVD9 or two - including the extras? Was space on the BD50 really so scarce that they couldn’t toss in the three audio commentaries at a low bit rate? The first question can be answered by simply stating that Fox are cheapskates and have already built up a reputation for diddling customers over when it comes to extras on their Blu-ray releases. The second question can also be answered by going down the “Fox are cheapskates” route: instead of licensing a more efficient codec, they chose to encode the movie using bloated old MPEG2, and in doing so ensured that the only element of the disc that’s “Beyond High Definition” is the pop-up menu.

Anyway, what of the transfer itself? It’s impressive, and in the upper echelon of Blu-ray efforts. No, it’s not The Descent or Silent Hill, and it doesn’t hold a candle to HD DVD greats like Serenity and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, or even almost-but-not-quite titles like King Kong and The Adventures of Robin Hood. It is very good, though: a solid 8/10 affair marred only by some artefacting in the opening snow-laden scenes (MPEG2, look at you!) and some mild but persistent edge enhancement. Obviously, I’ve not watched the entire film yet, so I may uncover some additional problems when I go through it with a fine toothcomb, but first impressions would put it more or less on a level with Constantine and Robin Hood Daffy.

My copy of the French collector’s edition DVD release of Lucio Fulci’s Beatrice Cenci also arrived today, from FNAC, along with the two most recent “Grande Collection” Asterix books (interesting that one, shipped on the final day of the last month from Amazon.fr, arrived on the same day as the other, shipped four days ago from FNAC). I’ve given it the once-over, and it appears to have a decent if unremarkable transfer (it’s 1.85:1, which appears to be the intended aspect ratio, although some of the opening credits on the right-hand side are barely contained within the frame on a zero-overscan display), although the lack of English subtitles is going to be a bit of a pain. Still, at least my French (rudimentary) is better than my Italian (non-existent), so I suppose I can probably just about muddle through with the help of the subtitles.

Stop press: Blu-ray wins the format war

Or so says Sony.

Clearly buying wholeheartedly into the myth that if you say something enough times it becomes true, Sony has decided, for something like the fourth time now, to declare itself the undisputed champion of the format war. Their source for this is the much-disputed Neilsen/Videoscan sales figures published for the month of January - a month that, for some reason, saw very few new HD DVD releases. These figures have been called into question on several occasions, due to rumours that the Blu-ray figures included Playstation 3 games, and that the HD DVD figures did not include HD DVD/DVD combo releases. Of course, the fact that Sony are giving away free Blu-ray titles to artificially boost their sales may also have something to do with it. And let’s not forget that Sony have conveniently waited for a drought of HD DVD software to finally choose to pay attention to sales figures. Whether or not the figures are accurate, though, I think it’s fairly safe to say that Sony are a little quick to be declaring victory after a single month of slightly-less-than-abysmal sales.

Blu-ray round-up

A plethora of Blu-ray discs went through the patented HMS Whimsy benchmarking system today, starting with American Psycho, which arrived from DVD Pacific this morning. Unfortunately, this is hands-down the worst high definition transfer I’ve seen to date. In fact, it’s downright guff, with edge enhancement that makes An American Werewolf in London’s ringing seem mild, and intrusive noise reduction that destroys the texture of the actors’ faces, making it look like everyone has taken a bath in a tub of grease. Indeed, I’d go as far as to say that I’m strongly considering selling it on and just hanging on to the standard definition version: it’s not that the HD version looks worse, but I can probably get more money by selling it than I would with the DVD. That’s how bad this looks.

Next up, Hostel, a rental copy of which arrived from LoveFilm. It’s not as bad as American Psycho, but it’s pretty naff, marred once again by edge enhancement, which gives it a decidedly harsh appearance. How can a master for a film little more than a year old look this bad?

The film itself was pretty disappointing too. It’s part of the recent wave of exploitation horror movies originating from the US, such as Saw and The Passion of the Christ, which have no actual purpose beyond repulsing the viewer with as much mindless gore as possible. In these films, there is no real plot to speak of, and the violence takes the form of sadistic torture carried out against defenceless prisoners with no justification. I have a feeling that this type of film is going to come to define the horror genre in the early 2000s, just as the late 90s were characterised by self-referential, “post-modern” Scream rip-offs, and the 80s became known for their Halloween-inspired teen slashers. For the first 70 minutes, it’s frankly tedious, a sort of bizarre look at an imaginary, squalid, barbaric Eastern Europe populated by skinhead ogres and busty, sex-crazed sirens who lure innocent young American boys to their deaths. If it’s meant to be ironic, it doesn’t come across, with the two aforementioned Americans neither annoying enough to give cause for cheer when they finally started getting hacked up, nor likeable enough to care what happens to them. The final 20 minutes do constitute something of a reversal of fortunes, with the sole survivor turning the tables against his torturers and staging a dramatic escape attempt, but it’s too little, too late. 4/10

Finally, Lyris received his DVD Pacific order containing Chicago and Flightplan. Unfortunately, the grossly edge enhanced Chicago looks like it’s going to be another title to go up on eBay in the very near future. Flightplan, meanwhile, looks considerably better, albeit not stunning. It’s one of a tiny number of Blu-ray titles to be encoded with VC-1, the codec more commonly associated with HD DVD.

Blu-ray, so far, has been a really, really mixed bag. Basically, I’ve seen two stellar transfers, several mediocre ones, a couple of poor ones and one outright awful one. Obviously, I’ve only seen a small number of Blu-ray titles in comparison with those available on HD DVD, but at this stage it’s fairly clear which format is delivering the more consistently impressive experience.

The latest HD image quality rankings

Time for the latest high definition image rankings update. This one is particularly noteworthy because, thanks to a combination of buying various titles myself and renting a handful to give the once-over, I’ve been able to add Blu-ray releases to the list. (I would have liked also to have added Hostel and S.W.A.T. to the list, but some dumdum managed to render the rental copies I received unreadable by attacking the data surface with some sort of CD cleaner and a rather coarse rag.)

Of the new additions, there are a few surprises. Chiefly, it seems that once again my views on image quality are out of step with those of the bulk of the reviewing populace. Silent Hill was held up to be wildly inconsistent, with some moments of awful image quality, when in reality it is a stunning-looking disc. Fantastic Four and Tears of the Sun, meanwhile, both received charitable if not outright ecstatic reviews, when in actual fact it turns out that both have been subjects to a disturbing degree of digital manipulation. Of the two, Fantastic Four is the worse, but Tears of the Sun is not what I expect from HD either: edge enhanced and with a strangely “waxy” look to it (not to mention more compression artefacts than I’ve seen on any other Blu-ray title), it sums up the sort of excessive tinkering I hate to see in a transfer. Perhaps, though, these fake-looking, processed, edge enhanced titles are what people actually want? How else can you explain the rave reviews of the likes of Brokeback Mountain on HD DVD, and of standard definition titles like The Lord of the Rings, Final Destination 3 and the remake of The Hills Have Eyes? The same goes for the HD DVD of Batman Begins (which, along with some other titles, I also rented), which is the worst-looking Warner disc I’ve seen this side of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Far be it for me to say “Everybody’s wrong except me”, but sometimes that’s genuinely how I feel.

10/10

• Corpse Bride (Warner, USA, HD DVD)
• Serenity (Universal, UK, HD DVD)
• Serenity (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Warner, UK, HD DVD)
• The Descent (Lions Gate, USA, Blu-ray)

9/10

• Looney Tunes: Rabbit Hood (Warner, USA, HD DVD)*
• King Kong (Universal, UK, HD DVD)
• The Bourne Supremacy (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• The Adventures of Robin Hood (Warner, USA)
• Miami Vice (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• Silent Hill (Sony Pictures, USA, Blu-ray)
• Doom (Universal, UK, HD DVD)
• Casablanca (Warner, USA, HD DVD)
• Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Warner, UK, HD DVD)

8/10

• Unleashed (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• Red Dragon (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• Constantine (Warner, USA, HD DVD)
• Looney Tunes: Robin Hood Daffy (Warner, USA, HD DVD)*
• Land of the Dead (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• V for Vendetta (Warner, USA, HD DVD)
• The Machinist (Toshiba, Japan, HD DVD)
• Sleepy Hollow (Paramount, USA, HD DVD)
• Million Dollar Baby (Warner, USA, HD DVD)
• Batman Begins (Warner, UK, HD DVD)
• Van Helsing (Universal, UK, HD DVD)

7/10

• Wolf Creek (The Weinstein Company, USA, HD DVD)
• The Exorcism of Emily Rose (Sony Pictures, UK, Blu-ray)
• Tears of the Sun (Sony Pictures, UK, Blu-ray)
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• The Mummy Returns (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Warner, USA, HD DVD)
• Enemy of the State (Buena Vista, USA, Blu-ray)

6/10

• Fantastic Four (20th Century Fox, UK, Blu-ray)
• Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (Paramount, USA, HD DVD)
• An American Werewolf in London (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• Brokeback Mountain (Universal, USA, HD DVD)
• Basic Instinct (Studio Canal, France, HD DVD)

* Found on the The Adventures of Robin Hood HD DVD.

HD DVD review: Brokeback Mountain

The original DVD of Brokeback Mountain felt rather empty in terms of extras. Even in this more feature-packed variant, it still feels as if the bonus materials are only scratching the surface, providing a strangely superficial look at what is as much a cultural event as a movie. As such, in conjunction with the very disappointing transfer, this release really doesn’t feel as if it’s all that it could have been, although it is undoubtedly the best home video iteration of the film thus far.

Courtesy of DVD Pacific, I’ve reviewed the HD DVD/DVD combo release of Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain, presented here in a package replicating all of the extras from the recent 2-disc Collector’s Edition DVD.

So much to see, so little time

It looks as if this is going to be quite a busy month for me as far as reviews are concerned. In addition to Brokeback Mountain (HD DVD) and Waking the Dead: Series 4 (DVD), which are hold-overs from January that I still need to complete (and I really should also do a write-up on last year’s Waking the Dead: Series 3, for the sake of completeness), I’ve also put in reservations for this month’s upcoming releases of Lucio Fulci’s Perversion Story (personally, I prefer its more literal translation title of One on Top of the Other), and Dario Argento’s episode for the second season of Masters of Horror, Pelts. Having already seen both, albeit not in the most ideal form, I’m expecting to lavish praise on the former and deliver a more lukewarm appraisal to the latter, although I am looking forward to seeing them both again.

I’ve also managed to snag a chance to review Paramount’s upcoming (February 20th) HD DVD of Babel, the latest film by Alejandro González Iñárritu, whose previous film, 21 Grams, I thought was excellent. Incidentally, it’s nice to see Paramount finally releasing something in high definition, even if its arrival does little more than to highlight how threadbare their slate of titles is: barring this, Failure to Launch and Payback are the only titles they have announced for 2007 so far. Oh, and interestingly enough, for Babel they would appear to have abandoned VC-1 as their HD DVD codec in favour of AVC (the Blu-ray variant is MPEG2, because Sony handles their HD release on the Blu front).

Oh, and I finally got fed up waiting for Amazon.fr to ship my copy of Beatrice Cenci, and ordered it instead from Fnac, who actually have it in stock. In the past, I’ve found Amazon (.fr, .co.uk, .com - you name it) to be irritatingly slow for deliveries. Basically, unless it says “Usually dispatched within 24 hours”, it’s more or less a foregone conclusion that it won’t actually ship for weeks, if at all. The same is true of the recently released Grande Collection edition of Asterix and the Goths, which I also cancelled from Amazon and ordered from Fnac (its partner in the February release schedule, Asterix and Obelix All at Sea, did, however, leave Amazon in a reasonably timely fashion). Amazon.co.uk did, however, dispatch my copy of the score to The Iron Giant, which I ordered last night, in less than 12 hours. Luckily, I should be able to afford all these expenses, given that I punted my Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on to a friend for £130 today.

More high-def movie madness

I’ve pre-ordered the upcoming HD DVD release of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (due out on April 24th) from Amazon.com. This is one of the few HD DVD titles announced with a definite release date that I’m actually interested in, which is sad to say the least - particularly given the impressive momentum that team HD DVD had last Autumn.

In the meantime, there are a few Blu-ray titles due out between now and Summer that I’m definitely interested in picking up. I’ve already got Casino Royale on pre-order, and I’ll also be picking up American Pyscho (February 6th), Hannibal and The Silence of the Lambs (both April 3rd), Cars (June 5th) and The Rock (June 8th). Whichever way you look at it, it’s not the most stellar line-up ever announced, but Lyris has also got Flightplan and Chicago on the way, and hopefully Warner and Universal will provide some definite HD DVD release dates before too long, so with any luck we won’t be left completely high and dry.

By the way, with all this high definition fun and excitement, I forgot to mention that the DVD of This Film is Not Yet Rated arrived last Thursday (February 1st). If you have any interest in films, Hollywood or otherwise, this is a must-watch, as it delves into the very heart of the Motion Picture Association of America, one of the most clandestine bodies in America, revealing just how messed-up the whole industry is. Weary, battle-scarred veterans, who have had their tussles with the sinister MPAA, bravely appear on camera to recount the hypocrisy, prejudice and pettiness with which they were faced in the process of trying to get their work certified. Particularly revealing are side by side comparisons of R-rated heterosexual and NC17-rated homosexual sex scenes, which clearly highlight the organisation’s anti-gay bias, while the most excitement comes in the form of private investigator Becky Altringer’s efforts to dig up dirt on the organisation and uncover the secret identities of its nameless, faceless raters. There are certainly some areas in which I felt it could have gone into more detail - perhaps, for example, discussing the ins and outs of a movie industry in which a rating which bars children from seeing a film is such a kiss of death, or indeed debating whether or not children should be allowed to see films such as Se7en and The Passion of the Christ in the first place, with or without parent supervision - but on the whole I found this to be an enlightening, and often shocking, look at the whole process. Now, I just wish someone would make a similar documentary on the (admittedly more accountable) BBFC…

Update, February 4th, 2007 11:50 PM: I pre-ordered American Psycho from DVD Pacific.

It’s an HD DVD capture extravaganza!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I took out a subscription to LoveFilm to facilitate the reviewing of Blu-ray discs I wouldn’t want to actually buy. Unfortunately, the number of available region-free Blu-ray discs in the UK is pretty small, and LoveFilm requires a minimum of ten titles to be in your “wanted” list before your account will become active. As a result, I threw in a bunch of HD DVDs I hadn’t yet seen, and, despite marking them as low priority and the Blu-ray titles as high priority, it was the HD DVDs that arrived today, including Doom and Van Helsing (both very good, but not outstanding transfers), and King Kong. Kong truly is a beauty to behold, and Microsoft were extremely wise to bundle this title with their Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on drive (unlike Sony, who were daft enough to include the apparently poor-looking Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby with the Playstation 3). Were it not for some very light edge enhancement, this would undoubtedly be the best-looking title I’ve ever seen. As it is, it’s an extremely high 9/10 (and I mean something like 9.9/10), but I really do want my 10/10 ratings for high definition material to mean absolute perfection.

By the way, this is, I think, pretty much conclusive proof that, during my screen capturing process, some detail is being lost. Compare my Shot 6 with almost exactly the same frame as captured by AV Science Forum member Gooki. I hope to get to the bottom of this eventually, but I’m selling my HD DVD add-on to a friend on Monday, so I’m afraid that, for the time being at least, this is likely to be my final HD DVD capture gallery.

DVDs I bought or received in the month of January

• Brokeback Mountain (R0 USA, HD DVD/SD DVD combo)
• The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire (R0 Germany, SD DVD)
• A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin: Remastered Edition (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• The Mephisto Waltz (R2 Spain, SD DVD)
• Waking the Dead: Series 4 (R2 UK, SD DVD)

DVD and HD DVD purchases this month were somewhat overshadowed by the ordering of a Playstation 3 and some Blu-ray discs to play on it. Look for impressions on these some time in early February.

Feeling Blu

My Playstation 3 and the three Blu-ray discs to play on it haven’t arrived yet, but this afternoon I got to experience Blu-ray in the comfort of my own home for the first time, thanks to the Panasonic DMP-BD10 that Lyris managed to snag for review. It’s a rather nicely-designed piece of equipment, and it certainly boots considerably quicker than our HD DVD player, but nothing that I’ve seen so far this afternoon has made me regret the decision to go with HD DVD way back in June.

We got three discs with the player: two demonstration reels, one from Panasonic and one from 20th Century Fox, and a copy of Fantastic 4 from Fox. Of the two demo discs, the Panasonic one, which features three music performances from different artists, encoded with MPEG4 AVC and featuring a variety of audio options, including uncompressed 7.1 LPCM and DTS 5.1, was the most visually impressive, with the only visible flaws seemingly being the result of the digital photography itself rather than the encoding. The same cannot be said about Fox’s MPEG2 demo disc, which featured clips and trailers from a variety of different films, ranging from striking (Walk the Line), to decent but soft-looking (Kingdom of Heaven), to completely unimpressive (X2: X-Men United). The latter description perfectly sums up Fantastic 4, which is one of the worst-looking high definition presentations I’ve seen so far. Virtually every artefact associated with a digital transfer is present here to some degree, from light edge enhancement to heavy-handed temporal noise reduction, which causes grain to clump and textures to drag when in movement. It also looks decidedly soft, much closer to, say, Studio Canal’s Basic Instinct HD DVD than I would have expected for such a recent, CGI-heavy blockbuster. Given that it is an MPEG2 encode on a 25GB disc, I’m slightly surprised that I didn’t find more compression artefacts than I did, but they’re definitely there, and the fact that most of the bonus materials have been tossed aside in order to cram the film on to the disc speaks volumes about how inefficient the codec is.

Oh, and the Java-powered menu system is an absolute nightmare. It’s slow and unresponsive, and makes me see just how much better a deal our HD DVD player is given that, despite its slow booting time, menu access is smooth and instantaneous.

Obviously I can’t evaluate an entire format based on one film and a couple of demo discs, but so far I’ve not seen anything to wow me. If I’d just spent £1,200 (which is what this player costs in the UK) on what I’d been promised was “the ultimate home theater [sic] experience”, I’d be a bit pissed.

PS. We have this player for a couple of weeks, so I intend to make the most of this by renting and reviewing as many Blu-ray titles as possible.

Eternal format wars

Universal continued its somewhat tepid support of HD DVD today by announcing two new titles for release on April 24th: Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the Eddie Murphy masterpiece The Nutty Professor. Given how much I enjoyed the former, I’ll definitely be picking up its high definition incarnation; as for the latter, well, let’s just say my life has already been “enriched” by that particular title, and it’s not an experience I feel compelled to repeat. Slightly more encouraging is the appearance of several highly regarded titles on the HD DVD Promotion Group’s Release List, including E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Psycho and The Shining. Obviously, without release dates, this can’t be taken as an official announcement, but it does imply that there is at least an intention to release these films on HD DVD at some point in the future.

In other news, I pre-ordered the upcoming Blu-ray release of Casino Royale (due out on March 13th). This will likely be my first ever Sony Blu-ray disc, given that they own very little worth bothering about (yes, believe it or not I’ll be passing on Little Man and Click), and, given the reports I’ve been hearing, I’m not expecting great things. Then again, they’re apparently going to switch from MPEG2 to MPEG4 AVC for this title, which means that it will hopefully not be the compression nightmare that many of their earlier titles were. I’ve also taken out a one-month subscription to LoveFilm, which means I will be able to rent the small number of region-free Blu-ray discs released in the UK in order to get a feel of what the format has to offer in terms of image quality. Obviously, this discounts all Fox titles, which are coded for Region B, as well as Sony’s releases of recent films (their policy is to make catalogue titles region-free).

Even more HD DVD captures

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is another really nice-looking disc: very smooth, rich colours, great compression, only a few minor signs of noise reduction slightly marring it. Okay, so it isn’t razor-sharp in the way that Serenity is, but few films are, and the smooth appearance is very appropriate for this film noir homage.

PS. Another problem with these captures that I’ve begun to notice is that, in addition to adding some softness that shouldn’t be there, colour banding is also appearing.

Yet more HD DVD captures

These shots are from Corpse Bride, which has emerged as one of the strongest-looking high definition discs. As before, these screen captures simply don’t do the transfer justice, and, until I can get to the bottom of this softening that seems to be going on, I’m going to have to warn against taking these as being indicative of the actual quality of HD DVD.

More HD DVD screen captures

These are from Unleashed. It’s not quite as good-looking as Serenity (a little softer and some very mild signs of temporal noise reduction), but still an absolute beauty to behold - especially when you consider that the file for the film itself, including audio, is a mere 12.8 GB. It’s because of transfers like this that I struggle to believe the mantra espoused by many Blu-ray supporters that 30 GB is not enough. This film comes on a single-layer (15 GB) HD DVD/DVD combo disc and looks amazing!

Warner saves Europe

Source: AV Science Forum

DVDRama has just unveiled a rather impressive-looking line-up of titles to be released on HD DVD throughout this year in France. As a nice bonus to HD DVD-only people, this includes titles distributed by Blu-ray studios in the US but owned by Warner in Europe, including The Prestige and The Island. Even more interestingly, though, a roster of titles featuring the In-Movie Experience are listed here as HD DVD exclusives (in other words, not coming to Blu-ray). The reason for this is clear: the Blu-ray camp has yet to get their interactive BD-Java technology working properly, and many of the first generation players will probably never be able to fully support it. As a result, Warner has been holding back many IME HD DVDs in the US to keep the playing field level, as it were. Such generous but moronic ideals are clearly not operating in Europe, though, with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire already available to buy in the UK. Whatever you think of the films in question, the titles with the “HD DVD only” tag attached should warm the cockles of any HD DVD supporter’s heart:

April 25

• The Island

May

• The Prestige

June

• The Prestige
• Natural Born Killers
• The Matrix (IME) (HD DVD only)

July

• Mad Max 2
• The Matrix Reloaded (IME) (HD DVD only)

August

• The Goonies
• The Matrix Revolutions (IME) (HD DVD only)
• Letters from Iwo Jima

September

• L.A. Confidential
• Blade Runner
• Poltergeist
• 300 (IME) (HD DVD only)
• Blood Diamond (HD DVD only)
• Zodiac

October

• Dirty Harry
• The Enforcer
• Sudden Impact
• Magnum force
• The Dead Pool
• Music and Lyrics
• The Reaping

November

• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (IME) (HD DVD only)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (IME) (HD DVD only)
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (IME) (HD DVD only)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (IME) (HD DVD only)

December

• 2001 A Space Odyssey
• A Clockwork Orange
• Eyes Wide Shut
• Ocean’s eleven (1960)
• Ocean’s eleven (2001)
• Ocean’s twelve
• The Shining
• The Wizard of Oz

Note: the full list actually also includes several titles already available in the US, which explains why the first few months, as presented here, appear to be so sparse.

Sign me up for The Matrix (thank god I don’t have to buy it in a box set with the shoddy sequels), Blade Runner, A Clockwork Orange, Eyes Wide Shut, and possibly a couple of others depending on my finances and what titles are being released by other studios at around the same time.